ipod classic appears to be locked

I spent the last two years plus digitising my music collection, thousands of vinyl, thousands of cds, thousands of audio tapes, thousands of cdrs and two bags of minidiscs. Over the last few days I filled nine 160GB Ipod Classics and half filled another one and once I fill that with new purchases I will move onto the four spare 160's and one spare 120GB.

Of the spares two of the sellers sent them with their own music collections still on them and I found that I could not add any of my own music or delete theirs. I tried reformatting via right click but this did not appear to work and I was not offered the usual reformat option when I opened itunes with them. Another of the spares once it reached half full stage kept saying drive not recognised. Any ideas for either of these problems?

I have had a year with no ipod, I was on what was my #5, I still have the original four left as they were for posterity, when I was caught in torrential rain and a drop appeared to go down the headphone cable, into my pocket and through the protective plastic case and into the ipod. I could see water behind the screen and put it into a bag of dry rice and left overnight but the battery was emptying after about twelve minutes so I had a new one fitted only to find the battery was emptying after a similar amount of time. Again, any ideas? I was about 90% of the way through it with multiple audio books running, when I plugged it into itunes a few days ago it said that it was in recovery mode and had to be reformatted deleting all of the content and I decided to do so as it appeared unsalvageable in any other way.

Any ideas with regard to these problems appreciated, thanks.